After the terrible massacre perpetrated on Israel and with the retaliation now being visited on Gaza, the Middle East is once again aflame. For Arabs and Jews, already deeply scarred, these tragedies deepen our fears and frustrations. But we should not succumb to anger. We need a new approach.
All of us bear the heavy historical weight of our specific identity, the voices of grandmothers and grandfathers, the story of their struggle, the wars that have already ended, those that go on still, and those that are within us.
I am proud to be from a Palestinian family whose roots are planted in this land for generations. But I am also a citizen of Israel. I know that the only way forward is to live with the Jewish people in peace and understanding, in brotherhood and sisterhood, with equality and mutual respect, for us as individuals and for our heritage and history, too.
It should not be that hard, because if you look past the conflict, our identities are so close that they cannot really be separated. How similar are the people who fight each other! It is hatred that makes a brother seem like an enemy. It is hatred that creates a mask, where only hating eyes are visible.
I have spent my career trying to persuade people on both sides to look past the mask, to see the commonality of values in an integrated and diverse society. A fifth of the 10 million citizens of Israel are Palestinians, and they're not going away. The Jews are not going away.
That does not contradict my undeniable affinity for Palestinians everywhere, including right across the borders, in the West Bank and Gaza. My empathy with their does not make me any less Israeli. On the contrary, it gives me strength to connect the two sides, driven by the conviction that we have no other way but to talk peace.
People like me offer a bridge. Some Israelis are startled by when people like me refer to themselves as "Palestinian-Israeli" rather than "Arab-Israeli." I urge them to understand that my attachment to the Palestinians is little different from that which many Jews feel toward Israel. Some have dual citizenship, while many contribute to Israel's security and prosperity. It does not make them less American, British, or French.
The world can contain complexity. Consider that scores of Palestinian Israelis were among those murdered by Hamas.
In Israel these days, there is a magnifying lens on Arab citizens. In the Jewish-dominated media, people are asking whether we condemned the massacre enough. Did we equivocate? Did we show too much empathy for the other side? Was the condemnation only on Twitter and not on Facebook?
I urge my Jewish friends, and indeed people around the world: Appreciate instead the difficulty of our position, especially after a year of enduring a far-right Israeli government that incites against us, discriminates against us, ignores the murderous crime wave in our towns and villages, and tries systematically to divide Jewish and Palestinian Israelis.
Consider instead the huge contribution to Israel made by my community's doctors and nurses, fighting side by side with Jewish colleagues, their fellow Israelis, to save lives—whether during the Covid pandemic or now, tending to the wounded from the massacre and the fighting.
In that context, everyone is treated the same. No one asks if the doctor is Arab or Jewish. No one asks if the patient was Arab or Jewish. There one finds no racism, no divisions, no far-right government, no Hamas. Only humanity and decency and a shared love of life.
What's the alternative. Another war? Another Intifada? That way lies only the abyss.
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote: "The war will end and the leaders will shake hands, but the old woman shall wait for her fallen son, the wife for her beloved husband, the children for their father. I don't know who sold our homeland, but I know who paid the terrible price."
Today families will bury their dead in Ashkelon and in Gaza. They paid the terrible price. They know in war there are no winners. There will be only losers until a new day shall arrive, when wisdom finally finds us. When hands puts down weapons, and reach out for peace.
Ghada Zoabi is the founder and CEO of Bokra, a news portal for Arabs in Israel and around the world. She is a philanthropist and activist working to promote civil society and coexistence between Arabs and Jews.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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